I remembered it from high school chemistry, one of those experiments where we made hydrogen. It was more of an acidic sensation on the palate than a real smell, but I recognized it. The pile of spent fuel at the bottom was beginning to outgas. Next would come the fire to end all fires. . . .A private detective working in Wilmington, North Carolina, is found dead in a gas-station restroom, apparently poisoned. But when her body sets off radiation alarms in the pathologist's office, suspicion falls on the nearby Helios nuclear power plant, a heavily guarded facility with supposedly failsafe procedures. As the FBI, local police, and the power plant's own security team investigate, ex-cop Cam Richter, head of the agency that employed the dead woman, begins his own inquiries. What was his detective investigating? And how could one person be poisoned by radiation without others being exposed? Cam soon finds himself up against powerful forces that will...

The tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima was the focus of an epic land and sea battle that produced one of the most iconic images of World War II: US Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi, an active volcano where American and Japanese soldiers, desperate to secure the island's airfields, fought hand to hand and always to the death. In this gripping novel, award-winning author and retired commodore P. T. Deutermann follows a young Navy gunnery officer stationed on the battleship Nevada from the beginning of the battle to its decisive end.Lieutenant Lee Bishop serves in the main plotting room aboard USS Nevada, targeting fourteen-inch shells from the ship's guns against enemy positions on Iwo Jima called in by frantic Marine spotters ashore. But after the Marines suffer devastating losses of spotting personnel to the Japanese hunting teams sent out specifically to kill them, Bishop volunteers to serve onshore as a replacement, calling in coordinates to target...

At the US Naval Academy, the students refer to the administration as the Darkside, a nickname befitting the secrecy and manipulation that occur behind closed office doors. So when a first-year student falls to his death from a campus building, the Academy tenses as the Darkside begins to creep out of the shadows to cut off any potential scandal. Retired naval aviator Ev Markham is now a professor at the Academy. When a provocative clue connects the dead student to senior midshipman Julie Markham, Ev knows how quickly his daughter could become the easy scapegoat the Darkside badly craves. But a second body convinces Academy security chief Jim Hall that a killer is on the loose. As both men struggle to uncover the truth, a psychopath more sinister than they can imagine lies in wait, protecting the ultimate-and most deadly-secret of all...

### Amazon.com Review P.T. Deutermann's latest is a topnotch topical thriller bursting with the expected expertise and insider knowledge he picked up as a Navy captain and arms control specialist. It's also something else: an unexpectedly resonant portrait of people, good and bad, who have been chewed up and spit out by military bureaucracies. Both the hero (an unlucky military investigator named David Stafford, whose career has been short-circuited by whistle-blowing and whose personal life is a disaster area) and the heavy (a career Army bean counter and petty thief, Wendell Carson, who suddenly gets the chance to move up and almost blows it at every occasion) are carefully drawn and fully credible. So are the underlings, officers and FBI agents who thread through their lives. This becomes especially important when Stafford--trying to track down a container of deadly biological nerve gas that Carson has stolen from an Army base in Georgia--crosses paths with a young girl who seems to have psychic powers. In less skilled hands, this kind of rogue element could send a vehicle skittering. But Deutermann quickly gives the girl and her keepers (a mysteriously intriguing woman teacher, a protective small-town policeman) such a strong presence that they become vital to the story's exciting and moving conclusion. Other of his excellent thrillers available in paperback include *The Edge of Honor*, *Official Privilege*, *Scorpion in the Sea*, and *Sweepers*. *--Dick Adler* ### From Publishers Weekly Deutermann's latest (after Sweepers) is a topnotch topical thriller bursting with the expected expertise and insider knowledge he picked up as a Navy captain and arms control specialist. It's also something else: an unexpectedly resonant portrait of people, good and bad, who have been chewed up and spit out by military and government bureaucracies. Both the hero (an unlucky military investigator named David Stafford, whose career has been short-circuited by whistle-blowing and whose personal life is a disaster), and the heavy (bumbling Army bean-counter and petty thief Wendell Carson) are carefully drawn and fully credible. So are the underlings, officers and FBI agents who thread through their lives. This becomes especially important when Stafford?trying to track down a container of a deadly biological nerve gas that Carson has stolen from an Army base in Georgia?crosses paths with a young girl who seems to have psychic powers. In less skilled hands, this rogue element could send the vehicle skittering. But Deutermann quickly gives the girl and her keepers (a mysteriously intriguing woman teacher, a protective small-town policewoman) such a strong presence that they become vital to the story's exciting, moving conclusion. Author tour. Agent, Nicholas Ellison; editor, George Witte. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A taut, suspenseful historical thriller set in the months of WWII: Did Japan also have an atomic weapon, and did America bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to pre-empt an attack on its fleet?A masterful historical thriller set during the waning months of World War II, The Second Sun poses a provocative question: Did Japan test an atomic weapon, and did America know about it in advance of its own decision to drop two nuclear bombs?March 1945: After a career of commanding destroyers in the Pacific theater of WWII, Captain Wolfe Bowen is based in Washington, DC, working for the Chief of Naval Operations. Bowen receives an urgent call from the commander of the naval shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: A German U-boat has been captured and brought to port. But what grabs Bowen's attention is the presence of two Japanese civilians on board, along with the massive size of the U-boat itself. What these civilians know about the cargo of the U-boat, as well as its...

A gripping tale of anti-submarine warfare in the World War II Pacific Theater, by a master of military adventure fiction.The Last Paladin by P.T. Deutermann is based on the true story of the USS Holland (DE-24), a World War II Atlantic Fleet destroyer escort which has spent the past two years in the unforgiving battle for survival against the German U-boats of the North Atlantic.Summoned to relieve destroyers that are bogged down by escort duty in the escalating Pacific Theater, the Holland is met with a rather cold reception. In the eyes of Pacific Fleet sailors, North Atlantic convoy duty pales in comparison to the bloody, carrier-sinking battles of Savo Island and Guadalcanal. However, Atlantic Fleet ships have had to specialize in one thing: anti-submarine warfare. The Holland is sent off into remote South Pacific operating areas with orders to find and destroy Japanese submarines—but with little expectation of success....

THRILL SEEKER Dangling silently in front of a cave eighty feet down the cliff's edge, the man snaps a picture of the enraged mountain lion. The furious beast lunges...but the man is gone, back up the rope. JUSTICE DEALER When a judge releases two unrepentant killers on a legal technicality, North Carolina police Lieutenant Cam Richter knows facing the victims' grieving families is going to be tough. But when Killer #1 turns up on the Internet riding a homemade electric chair?followed a few days later by Killer #2?Cam thinks despair may have turned to vigilante justice. MAN EATER But it doesn't add up, especially when Cam becomes a target. It looks like these vigilantes may also be cops, and he's quickly running out of people to trust. The answers lie deep in the North Carolina wilderness, where Cam must track down this mysterious group of adrenaline-driven "Cat Dancers"--and risk losing everything he has left..

When a young Israeli woman suddenly goes missing, her boyfriend, an American nuclear engineer, suspects her disappearance is connected to her tantalizing theory about the haunting fortress of Masada. He decides to travel to Herod's 2000 year old mountain fortress to see if her theory was right. There, he makes a discovery so astonishing that forces from the dark side of Israeli intelligence begin to converge on him to deflect his pursuit of the truth by any means necessary. With the aid of a beautiful Israeli archaeologist, he struggles to bring to light the treasures he believes are concealed in the mountain, unaware that there is a dangerous contemporary secret at stake.

Based on a true story―P. T. Deutermann's Trial by Fire is a dramatic WWII novel of attack, survival, and triumph on board an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.It's March 1945 and the war in the Pacific is approaching its apocalyptic climax. The largest wartime armada ever assembled, Task Force 58, is closing in on Okinawa; once taken, it will finally put American B-29 bombers in comfortable range of the home islands of Japan―and victory.At the heart of the fleet are 14 Essex-class aircraft carriers, including the USS Franklin, known as "Big Ben"―a 27,000-ton behemoth, home to 3,600 crewmen and 100 aircraft. Just after dawn, while crewmen prepare for battle, a single Japanese Yokosuka D4Y bomber breaks through the clouds and drops a 500-pound semi-armor piercing bomb on Big Ben. The bomb rips through the wooden flight deck before exploding on the hangar deck, amidst two dozen fully fueled and armed fighter-bombers. The resulting explosion engulfs both the hangar deck and all the planes spotted on the flight deck. Bombs cook off and rockets howl in all directions, both on the flight deck and down in the hangar bays. Hundreds of men are forced to leap into the sea to escape the rivers of burning aviation gasoline, leaving the captain with only one third of his crew, of whom there are more dead, wounded and trapped men left onboard than able-bodied sailors.Trial By Fire is the gripping novelization of how, against all odds, the sailors of the Franklin were able to save their ship, after 3 agonizing days of battling the flames that ultimately claimed the lives of 832 men and injured 300 more. Readers will be astounded and humbled by the heroic actions of a few extraordinarily brave sailors in the face of unending catastrophe. Review "Heroism abounds as Deutermann skillfully brings moments like the rescue of 300 men trapped below decks to life, while also vividly conveying the sensations of pervading death...fans of naval history will be enthralled." –Publishers Weekly About the Author P. T. DEUTERMANN is the author of many previous novels including Pacific Glory, which won the W. Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction. Deutermann spent twenty-six years in military and government service, as a captain in the Navy and in the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an arms-control specialist. He lives with his wife in North Carolina.

From Publishers WeeklyFull of imaginative plotting touches, Deutermann's fast-paced sequel to his acclaimed 2005 suspense novel, The Cat Dancers, finds Cam Richter, formerly a lieutenant with the Manceford County, N.C., sheriff's office, now doing less stressful work as the head of a PI firm staffed with other ex-cops. Park ranger Mary Ellen Goode, Richter's more-than-colleague who was severely traumatized in their last joint inquiry, reaches out to him for help after a probationary ranger is raped and left for dead in a Smoky Mountains national park. Richter's inquiries soon reveal that the crime was tangentially related to a much bigger criminal conspiracy, possibly centered on methamphetamine sales orchestrated by a figure out of a Grimm's fairy tale, the evil Grinny Creigh, and her incestuous clan. The author's impressive ability to bring the remote Appalachian region to life bodes well for the health of this series. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistHigh in the mountains of North Carolina, a family operated methamphetamine gang has finally, after years of operation outside the law, gone too far. When Cam Richter, a freelance investigative consultant (and formerly a lieutenant in the sheriff's department), discovers that the malevolent Creigh family has branched out into child abuse, he vows to do everything in his power to bring them down, once and for all. But he didn't reckon on Grinny Creigh, matriarch of the clan and an incredibly ruthless, amoral villain. She is also one of the crime genre's more original and memorable creations, a mother-cum-crime-lord with a heart forged out of cold steel. Grinny is a welcome change from the usual sort of thriller villain, and she makes what could have been a ho-hum novel into something altogether different. This is definitely a cut above previous offerings (mainly Clancy-like military thrillers) from retired U.S. Navy captain Deutermann. David PittCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

"Scorpion in the Sea" by P.T. Deutermann is a military thriller about a fishing boat that disappears off the Florida coast, leading to a Navy cover-up and a confrontation involving a WWII-era destroyer. The story features unconventional Navy officer Mike Montgomery and his complex relationship with Diane Martinson, the Chief of Staff's wife.

A novice naval aviator grows into a hero in this gripping and authentic WWII adventure by a master storyteller Lieutenant Bobby Steele, USN, is a fresh-faced and eager naval aviator: a "Nugget," who needs to learn the ropes and complex procedures of taking off and returning safely to his aircraft carrier. A blurry night of drinking lands him in an unfamiliar bed aboard the USS Oklahoma; later that day, the Japanese destroy Pearl Harbor. After cheating death and losing his friend in this act of war, the formerly naive Steele vows to avenge the attack.Flying sea battle after battle, Steele survives the most dangerous air combat in World War II, including Midway, is shot down twice, rescued twice, and eventually leads a daring mission to free prisoners from a secluded Japanese POW camp. Packed with authentic military action on land and at sea in the Pacific Theatre of WWII and featuring a memorable protagonist based on a true-life hero, The Nugget...

A gripping and authentic World War II naval adventure by a master storytellerThe Hooligans fictionalizes the little-known but remarkable exploits of "The Hooligan Navy" that fought in the Pacific theatre of World War II. Loosely-organized in fast moving squadrons, PT (patrol torpedo) boats were the pesky nemesis of the formidable Japanese navy, dubbed "the mosquito fleet" and "devil boats" for their daring raids against warships, tankers, and transport ships.After the Pearl Harbor raid plunges America into war, young surgical resident Lincoln Anderson enlists in the Navy medical corps. His first deployment comes in August 1942 at Guadalcanal, when after a brutal sea battle and the landing of Marines on the island, Anderson finds himself triaging hundreds of casualties under relentless Japanese air and land attacks.But with the navy short of doctors, soon Anderson is transferred to serve aboard a PT boat. From Guadalcanal to the Solomon...

### From Publishers Weekly Deutermann delivers a lot more than the standard military thriller in his second novel (after Scorpion in the Sea) , though there is certainly plenty of high-tech weaponry and violent action surrounding the mission of the U.S.S. John Bell Hood in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War. The author's 26 years of active Navy service are put to good use in depicting shipboard life, procedures and reactions under battle conditions. While Deutermann differs from other purveyors of military fiction in his ability to create strong and compelling female characters, the story of Maddy Holcomb's seduction by an intriguing civilian Marine trainer back home in San Diego is essentially a counterpoint to the heart of the matter, her husband Lt. Brian Holcomb's shipboard struggle with an unexpected enemy. Slotted as weapons officer aboard the Hood , Holcomb desperately needs a good rating to advance his career. After a disastrous foul-up makes evident that there is a dangerous drug problem among the enlisted ranks aboard ship, he wants to crack down hard, but is thwarted by the executive officer. Ship's command chooses to deal with the situation in its own off-the-books fashion, keyed somehow, Brian comes to realize, to the enigmatic captain's strange behavior. Brian continues to press to have things done "the Navy way," unaware that the Hood 's mysterious drug kingpin is sabotaging his efforts. Deutermann keeps the adrenalin pumping in this exciting genre standout. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. ### From Library Journal Brian Holcomb is the new weapons officer for the John Bell Hood, a guided-missile frigate on patrol off the coast of Vietnam in the last months of the war. Striving to overcome a less-than-glowing fitness report from his previous ship, Holcomb is tempted to fall into the "go with the flow" ethics of the other officers, who overlook stoned young sailors, until he is befriended by a group of chief petty officers who practice their own justice to keep the ship afloat. In the meantime, Brian's beautiful but immature wife, Maddy, is attracted to a mysterious Native American on his own way to the war, and the ship's captain seems to be unwell and curiously detached from daily problems. Vividly drawn scenes of shipboard life and customs, including liberty at Subic Bay in the Philippines, are contrasted with the high-tension drama of the war itself. Deutermann, a career naval officer, does his usual excellent job of accurate and exciting tale-telling; his romantic subplot, here more successful than in Scorpion in the Sea (LJ 9/15/92), allows him to add the extra dimension of the world of navy wives. A winner for naval history and adventure buffs. *Elsa Pendleton, Boeing Computer Support Svcs., Ridgecrest, Cal.* Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

On a dark night, a bridge is blown to smithereens, thunderously plunging a one-hundred-car-train deep into the Mississippi River. In Washington, the FBI scrambles--sending Assistant Director Hush Hanson and agent Carolyn Lang to investigate the deadly act of domestic terror.Hanson is a team player and killer marksman. Lang has an agenda of her own. By the time the two agents leave Washington, they are on a collision course with each other. And another bridge has exploded.Now, the investigation is exploding into an inter-agency feud. The brass is after a terrorist cell, while Hanson and Land suspect a single man--the Train Man--is bringing down the bridges on by one. But as more death and destruction strike the river, on one can guess that far greater danger is looming. A top-secret, emergency shipment of unstable nuclear waste has been sent west by train. And when the nukes meets the river there will be no way across, no time to turn back, and almost no...